Comprehensive Reflective Letter

It is very important that you give the impression of being both serious and believable in your letter. For this reason, carefully consider the audience of this letter. The portfolio readers will not be interested in reading compliments from you toward your teacher, them, or the course. They are also not interested in reading a critique of the course or your instructor. (You will have a chance to evaluate the course and your instructor on the course evaluations). Rather, the readers of your portfolio are interested in your ability to show that you have learned some useful writing strategies in the course and can demonstrate knowledge of yourself as a writer – not just through saying it, but also doing it. That is, a sentence that says you’ve learned a lot about grammar that contains grammatical errors is not going to be very convincing.

The letter should be addressed to the readers of your portfolio (“Dear Portfolio Readers:”). We will be expecting you to demonstrate four kinds of knowledge for this assignment. You can divide your letter into these four kinds of knowledge:

Self-Knowledge. By this we mean your awareness of how you are developing as a writer. Work at answering the following questions in your letter:

What did you learn about yourself as a writer over the course of the semester?

What changes have occurred in your writing practices or the way you approach writing assignments?

Are there any changes in the way you approached one writing project as opposed to another?

Content Knowledge:

This refers to what you have learned about the different subjects that you have chosen to write about so far this semester.

What did you learn about various topics over the course of the semester as a result of reading essays, studying ads and speeches, etc.?

Of the material that you responded to or analyzed over the course of the semester, what struck you as the most interesting, and why?

What new perspectives did you gain about particular subjects by considering them from different viewpoints than you otherwise might have?

Rhetorical Knowledge: Rhetorical decisions refer to the choices you make as a writer when you consider both your audience and purpose and the rhetorical moves of other writers. For example, you know that it’s important to consider opposing points of view if you want to persuade readers to consider your argument. You know that certain word choices are better than others in an academic essay, as is the care you take with the punctuation and other editing concerns. The selection of essays for your portfolio is a rhetorical decision, because you are trying to persuade your readers to see you as a competent writer. Even the care you take with conventions of editing (punctuation, spelling, even the MLA style) can be considered a rhetorical choice.

What did you learn about rhetoric this semester, both by writing your essays and considering the writing of others? What have you learned about the rhetorical demands of audience, purpose, and genre, and how has that knowledge affected your writing and reading practices?

How do the essays included in your folder demonstrate your awareness of rhetoric and rhetorical choices? Cite particular passages from your essays to illustrate the awareness.

Which of these choices are most effective and why?

Critical Knowledge or Judgment: This refers to your awareness of significant strengths and weaknesses in your writing. We are also interested in your ability to identify what you like or value of the writing in your portfolio and to explain why.

Which is the best paper in the portfolio and why?

How has your ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in your writing changed over the course of the semester?

What role has peer, instructor, or other reader feedback had on assessments of your work?

What improvements would you make in the essays you’ve included in your portfolio if you had more time?

What are the most important things you still have to work on as a writer?

What is the most important thing you have learned in the course?

How do you expect to use what you’ve learned from the course in the future?